


You and Me Both

by Sylvestris



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Dogs, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22304026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvestris/pseuds/Sylvestris
Summary: Jesse finds a stray dog near his Alaskan home.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65
Collections: Blue Christmeth 2019





	You and Me Both

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dokiis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dokiis/gifts).



> Happy Blue Christmeth, dokiis! I hope you enjoy.

The cabin that Ed found for him in the woods outside Haines isn’t much to look at. There’s a hardscrabble driveway, faded vinyl sidings, a skinny metal chimney, two small square windows. It’s flanked by a lean-to workshop and a weather-bleached stack of firewood. It has floors that creak, draughts that steal in under the front door at night, an ancient wood-burning stove. 

It’s perfect.

Jesse realises, sitting on his new bed and unfolding all the oddly pristine new bedding he bought in town, that this is the first home of his own he’s ever had. Aunt Ginny’s house was his, but it was always indelibly hers; the duplex with Jane was only temporary. This place is a blank canvas, marked only by the lives of strangers. It’s exhilarating, and in the small hours of the night, it’s frightening. _You can be anyone!_ Jane once told him. What if this place is where he finds out who he really is? 

Cleaning out the workshop absorbs most of his first two weeks. Among the things he inherited from the previous owner is a tattered wall map with _Köppen Climate Types of Southeast Alaska_ printed at the top in a dated font. He lives in the zone marked _Dry-summer continental_ , but he arrived on the wrong side of winter and he could count on one hand the number of days it hasn’t rained or snowed since he got here. After the first big snowfall he laid down supplies, tinned food and gas for the generator and so forth, just in case the roads became impassable. It felt a little like an overreaction until another foot and a half fell the following week. 

He gets a job painting and repairing boats outside the Haines Fishermen’s Co-operative, and when he mentions to the owner what he’d really like to do in his off-hours, the guy hooks him up with a bunch of carpentry supplies that someone doesn’t need any more. There’s a sawbuck, a long table, a bench worn smooth and dipped where the guy used to sit. A lot of the work Jesse does would be easier with another pair of hands, but in this shop full of metal tools and shadowy corners he prefers to work alone. One of the first things he did when he made the place his own was pry the bars from the small high window at the back. It left his hands blistered and his shirt soaked in sweat, but his lungs felt less cramped in his chest when the frame clattered to the ground.

He’s out in the woods looking for kindling when he hears it, the rustle. His first thought is a bear, because the few people he’s spoken more than a few words to since arriving have all warned him about bears. He’s left his shotgun in the house, as usual. Bears are just out there being bears, is his thinking; it’s people you’ve got to worry about. Even so, Jesse goes so still and quiet that he can hear his heartbeat.

Glancing around the trunk of a silver birch, he sees it: a scrawny-looking dog with matted blond fur, chewing at the carcass of a crow. “Hey!” he says, without meaning to, and the dog vanishes. 

That can’t be right, he thinks. Cats can be free-range or outdoor or whatever, but not dogs. Dogs need two meals a day and somewhere warm to sleep at night. They need people.

He rummages in the fridge for some fresh meat, cuts it into cubes, and scatters it in the little clearing where the dog appeared. It must be starving, because it’s back almost immediately. Jesse gets down on the ground, making himself smaller so he doesn’t look like a threat, and holds out another handful of chopped ham. 

“Hey. Hey, buddy. Hey. Come here.”

The dog looks up at him and barks twice, but not in an angry way, more like she— it looks like a she, he decides with a quick glance— wants him to know she isn’t going to trust him just yet.

“That’s okay, buddy,” he mutters, sitting on his haunches. “I wouldn’t trust me either. It’s not personal, right?”

He sits there until the dog is willing to eat out of his hand.

  


“What kind of asshole just abandons a dog?” he says out loud, startling himself with the sound of his own voice. He’s washing the dog in a large tray of warm water on his workshop floor. The suds come away greyish-brown as he soaks her fur; there's a jagged scar on her shoulder that looks like it could be from barbed wire. She’s shivering, so he rubs her carefully with the thickest towel he can find. Then he notices what he didn’t before: the dog’s teats or nipples or whatever they’re called are full, prominent. Like she’s just had—

“Wait,” Jesse says. “Do you have _puppies?_ ”

As soon as Jesse opens the door, the dog disappears back into the woods.

It doesn’t take him long to find the den, but it’s been so cold lately and it surprises him that _this_ , after everything that’s happened, is enough to make his eyes sting with tears. They are small and balled up and their eyes aren’t even open yet. He kneels and scoops them up, one by one, balancing them on his thighs and in the crook of his arm, and thanks God or the forest spirits or whoever’s in charge here because all seven of them are alive. 

“Okay, okay,” he mutters, as the mother dog darts nervously beside him, barking and nipping at his arm. “Okay. I’m not gonna hurt your babies. I would _never_ hurt your babies. We’re gonna go back to the house—” he unzips and unbuttons all the pockets on his coat, trying to find space for each wriggling pup— “and we’re gonna get you all warmed up, and fed, and I guess you little guys’ll need some like formula or something, but that’s okay. We’re all good.”

He pulls all of the mothbitten old blankets out of the closet and makes a bed for the mother dog, whom he’s named Bear, next to his own bed, so he can keep an eye on her and the litter overnight. When Bear shivers after dark, he puts his coat over her too. He buys seven tiny collars and numbers them in Sharpie so he won’t get the puppies mixed up. He gets a kitchen scale, too, so he can make sure they’re all growing properly, and once he’s talked to the town vet he knows what kind of special milk and syringes to buy in case any of them doesn’t gain enough weight. He buys enough chew toys for all of them so they won’t destroy his furniture once their teeth start coming in. His bedframe still isn’t spared from bite marks, but he doesn’t mind; it gives the place character. 

In a fit of whatever the opposite of inspiration is, he Googles _how to name seven puppies_ on one of the library computers. It doesn’t help, so he decides he’ll name them one at a time, as the mood takes him.

“What’re you guys, half wolf?” he asks them, four weeks into their lives together, as they tussle with each other in a furry heap on his bedroom floor. They have big paws and strong little tails and they’re getting heavy for puppies, not that he has much experience to compare with. “That’s a thing, right?”

He still spaces out from time to time, taken back by a sound or a sight or a thought into another place. Then Bear puts her chin on his knee and whines, and he can look into her big dark eyes and bury his hands in her fur, and he remembers that he’s here, and he's free, and he’s got eight dogs to look after, and someone’s got to be the guy who gets up at six to feed them and walk them and teach them to behave.

It helps.


End file.
